It's difficult to think straight about the priorities in one's own life, but if you ever manage it, you might conclude that the most important question has to be "how will I be spending eternity?" At one level, that's not even a matter of opinion: it's a truism, a trivial statement, a bit of mathematical sophistry if you like. The span of your own life is zero when compared to eternity. Therefore, the question of what, if anything, you are going to be getting up to in the hereafter has to be more important than what you are going to be doing in life.

The wrinkle, of course, comes in the words, "if anything". You might decide that your consciousness will not exist beyond the moment of your death, and that therefore the span of your life is the only part worth considering. Millions have come to this conclusion. I know I have. But in doing so, we have had to tackle that question of eternity, even if we have answered it only implicitly by dismissing it.

It follows that, if we're wrong, as atheists, we're making the biggest and most serious mistake anyone can ever make. No matter how nicely our lives turn out, the whole experience will be swept away like a mayfly in a hurricane if it turns out that, after all, an eternity of suffering awaits us the moment we step out onto the floor for the Mortal Coil Shuffle. Spending forever in some medieval inferno will not be made any better for us by knowing that we didn't believe it ever existed. In fact, quite apart from being in everlasting agony we might well feel, as Rowan Atkison put it in his excellent "Devil" sketch, a right bunch of charlies.

Of course, we cannot know the Truth for sure. Let us not descend to Richard Dawkins' level and bicker about evidence, or plausibility, or what we may or may not consider to be proof of the origins of life, the universe and everything. Science provides us with a highly sophisticated physical description of the universe, and a highly sophisticated biological description of the life that potters around in it, but we can still only describe how things happen, not why. On certain subjects, such as how our physical and biological makeup leads to the experience of consciousness, we're pretty stumped as to the how as well as the why, and we seem unlikely to get much further. But even in those areas where the scientific model is a bit more fully worked out, is a physicist's answer to the question of why the universe exists any more intrinsically plausible than a Creationist's? (So... you're saying that all the matter in the universe sort of exploded into being and carried on expanding, and it's no good asking what existed before that because time itself cannot be said to go back earlier than that point... right... er, doesn't that strike you as being a bit, well, unlikely? Why would a thing like that happen?)

All this, I hear you say, is yet more trivial-ology, more sophistry. Of course, you continue, beginning to rant and rave a little, it's impossible to prove that God didn't create the world in seven days and then go around burying the bones of dinosaurs that never existed for a bit of a giggle, any more than it's possible to prove that the universe and everything in it wasn't knitted into being by my grandmother last Thursday. What's more, you add, wiping the foam from your lips, if I had paid any money to read this article I would now be asking for it back, because you're beginning to sound like a weedy woolly agnostic and not an atheist at all, and I can see that you're going to end in a diffident, indecisive and vaguely idealistic mess like every high school essay ever written. Grrr!

Calm yourself. All I'm trying to illustrate is that atheism is a leap of faith, like any other faith, and that there is a distinction between what one believes and what one knows. If it is accepted that we cannot Actually Really Truly Know the Answers, then being an atheist cannot be painted as a purely logical, rational response to the facts. If logic were the only consideration, then it would be a much better idea to embrace, say, Christianity ¹ as a set of beliefs, than to remain godless. To illustrate this, let's have a look at the risks and rewards involved when atheists and Christians place their cosmological bets against each other (this point of logic is called Pascal's Wager - see the edited Guide article of that name for another viewpoint):

To the winners:

If the Christians are right, and they have lived in accordance with their beliefs, they will go to Heaven. Heaven is really nice, and what's more, they get to stay there for ever. If the atheists are right, they will never know it, but they are permitted a grim smile as they slip into oblivion, secure in the knowledge that the Christians have been wasting their lives talking to something that doesn't exist and generally making themselves look a bit silly.

To the losers:

If the Christians are wrong then they are snuffed out of existence like the rest of us and they never know the difference. If the atheists are wrong, then they are in real danger of going to Hell. Hell is the worst thing that can happen to anyone. I don't wish to dismiss or down-play any of the very real and appalling suffering that takes place in this world, but Hell is, by definition, worse. What's more, it never ends.

Place your bets

On which side of the table would any sensible person put their money? The conclusion is clear: for our own good, atheists should stop not believing in God, and just jolly well believe in God.

So, why haven't I, as an atheist, simply cancelled my subscription to the Big Nothing and signed on the dotted line for God? The answer is that I can't bring myself to do it. It just wouldn't feel right, because in my bones I know that God-shaped explanations of the world are wrong. The reasons for this feeling can be verbalized, and even given the format and veneer of a logical argument, but I'm not going to do that because any intelligent theist would find them offensive, and it's not really very interesting to launch into that kind of debate. The point is that the feeling itself is as much a fundamental part of my character as, for example, my sexuality.

There is an analogy here. After all, I can quite see, when I think about it in the abstract, that it would be very nice to be able to enjoy sexual intercourse with both sexes.²
The world of sexual possibilities would double (more than double, if you count the various combinations...) and that would be great, but there's a problem: while I like the idea of going to bed with people of sex A, I feel that any similar experience with a person of sex B would be really quite unpleasant. I could go through the motions, certainly, but I wouldn't be giving or getting what I'm supposed to be giving and getting out of the experience. That is just the way I'm wired.³

So it is with religious belief. It would be an almost indescribably good idea to transfer my afterlife insurance policy to God and Son, and, though I have no complaints about the way things are going at the moment, I might even be happier in this life if I believed in a god. But it simply goes against the grain of my nature, and quite apart from the way it would make me feel to try and live a lie, I'm fairly sure that the Christian God, from my limited understanding of what it is meant to be, would not be impressed by someone simply "going through the motions" when their heart was not in it. An evangelical Christian would say that I only have to open my heart to God's love. I say that's a nice trick if you can do it. There is a good reason why I cannot, and it has to do with something that the evangelical Christian should recognize: a belief, entrenched at the level of an instinct, in something very important that I cannot prove. That's a fairly good working definition of faith.

So, fellow atheists, please don't pretend you don't have faith, and please don't try and pretend that your faith is covering a smaller gap in the facts than anyone else's. And for Random Chance's sake don't let anyone tell you that you don't have faith, because, if you have taken the bold step of refusing Pascal's Wager, or disregarding it, or arguing it out of existence, then you clearly do.